Author
Topic: Borrowed Books (Read 2333 times)

There comes a time in every gamers life when a friend tests the bonds that bind us together as brothers in gaming. That friendship, that bond is placed in extreme duress when one friend utters to another...

Hey man, can I borrow one of your books?

Palms go cold, sweat beads on the brow...D I trust you enough with my precious game books? Do i dare release that which is so hard to come by, so expensive into your casual care? What happens to our friendship if I saw no? Will they be offended?

Okay, perhaps not everyone suffers from maternal feelings to their game books like I do. Eventually the book is exchanged, and then the problems start.

Hey man, are you done with my book yet? Are you using my book as a coaster for your drinks?

So what do you think of the book so far? GIVE IT BACK GIVE IT BACK!!!

Finally, the book comes back. The following inspection would make a NASCAR official look like an ameature with a tape measure. I exaggerate, most all of the books I have loaned out have always come back in immaculate shape...but not all of them.

I let a friend borrow Battletech Technical Readout 3058. It came back with a huge coffee ring in the cover, coke spilled into the pages. It had dried, and the pages gained a lovely brown tone, and were curled like waves through the spill area. And the icing on the cake, the out cover was broken off of the pages, which were still bound together with glue.

I borrowed a friend of mine a few books (Pratchett, I liked him a lot at some point) and he sort of didn't return them... at first we couldn't get in touch, then he started to forget them, then he couldn't find them, misplaced or something, then...

Of course, dumb myself borrowed a few more books later, and lost them too.

Long story short, now, a few years later we got out of touch. No bad feelings, the friendship is simply over. And my books are gone.

If Nimblefinder ever comes back and reads he will know. I didn't mention it to him personally at the time.

The hard cover LOTR trilogy with art throughout the book. Not a prized possession but one that I expected to keep in good condition while I read and reread it through the years.

Not sure how to describe the damage, but the binding separated so that all that was holding the front cover on was the inner paper that crossed the seams. The front cover would just flop around and didn't support the book so reading except on a table was almost impossible.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Lent another 'friend' a half dozen anime movies which he moved with. I got to him during the moving process but he "couldn't find them" and "I will send them to you as soon as I get settled." Yeah, whatever.

All the tea and soda stains on my books are all my fault. I take full responsibility.

I will admit that I am a bibliophile, and I cant stand to see books harmed. I have a set of LoTR, boxed set of books published in 1976, still in the gold box with the elven crests on the outside. My wife wanted to read them, and I told her no, to go buy her own she couldt read mine.

She was kinda put out, but after her first copy of Fellowship was dis-covered in the floorboard of the car, she admitted she understood why I wouldt let her borrow my precious....

I have a friend who uses my books. He's recently started his own campaign and didn't feel like shelling out the extra moola for the books, so I just let him use mine, but since I play in his campaign each Tuesday, and he plays in mine on Saturdays, it would be fairly difficult for him to lose them, not that I'm too worried about that anyway Besides, I could always just borrow some video games and "forget" them if it came to that.

From time to time, I have players borrow books of mine, but they are prompltly returned, allong with the money they owe me for dinner and the like.

I have to admit that I borrow books from them as well, but they are typicaly returned during the next play session as well.

I have never returned a book with stains and I have never had a book returned with stains, so .... I think I am one of the lucky people here.

I have to admit I would not borrow a RPG book to a person that is not playing in one of my groups, or who is my GM. I play in a group and I would not consider borrwing a book to one of the other players there. (This might have to do with the fact that we try to play every month and we have not been playing for three months I think. We are supposed to play again next saturday.)

Yours,

Ylorea

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______________________________________The answer is 42, but does anybody know the question?

I let this guy I once knew borrow a copy that I possesed of Return of The King,When I got it back after over a year,the cover art was peeling off.Needless to say,I felt deeply insulted.

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“I'm yet another resource-consuming kid in an overpopulated planet, raised to an alarming extent by Hollywood and Madison Avenue, poised with my cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you're old and weak.” -Bill Watterson